Tag Archive for coaching book review

If you’re a coach of any sport and you don’t know the name John Wooden, then you’ve missed out. Many consider The Wizard of Westwood is one of the all-time great coaches, with a career highlighted by winning 10 NCAA men’s basketball national championships when he coached UCLA.. No doubt legendary UCLA volleyball coaches Al Scates (men) and Andy Banachowski (women) would tell you they were influenced by Wooden. Both their careers overlapped with his.

Back in the early days of my volleyball coaching career I read They Call Me Coach. It was definitely influential. If you don’t know much about Wooden, that book might be a good starting point as it’s his autobiography.

Wooden on Leadership is more of a management book. It was clearly intended to target business people, but retains a strong coaching flavor. Naturally, that means lots of basketball talk. That’s more in terms of context than anything technical, though.

The first part of the book focuses on Wooden’s famous Pyramid of Success. He takes you through each of the 15 blocks. Not only does he explain what each one is about, but also why he placed them where he did.

The second section carries on from the Pyramid concepts and drills down on things. Here you get Woodens views on leadership, managing emotions, incentives and motivation, focusing on performance rather than the score, and the importance of character among several other topics.

The last part of the book actually brings his old coaching notebook in to the discussion. In this section Wooden shares a number of different snippets. They cover a variety of topics related to coaching and leadership.Obviously, they are from a basketball coaching journal, but he does a good job generalizing them.

If you’re like me you’ll stop on a regular basis while reading this book to grab a quote. Here are just a couple that caught my attention.

“The best leaders are lifelong learners; they take measures to create organizations that foster and inspire learning throughout. The most effective leaders are those who realize it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts most.”

“For any leader, any organization, the plans are a starting point. That’s why I put them at the beginning of Part Three. The much more difficult task for anyone in a leadership position is to create an environment, a way of thinking, a set of beliefs, that ultimately gets everyone working eagerly and to the best of their ability to make those plans result in a winning organization.”

This is just a taste of the wisdom you’ll find in Wooden on Leadership. I definitely encourage you to put it on your reading list.

While The Coaching Habit, by Michael Bungay Stanier, does feature “coaching” in the title, it’s probably thought of best as a management book. It’s not about coaching as we sports coaches would think of it. It is, however, about managing people. Since this is at the core of our work as coaches, I think you might find it worth a read.

The subtitle of the book, “Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever”, touches on the approach the author takes. I don’t think, though, it really provides a full sense of what the book’s about.

Basically, this is a book of questions. The idea is to use them to help get to the heart of issues. It’s also about helping people help themselves rather than solving problems for them ourselves. You may find at least some of them useful in working with your athletes.

There’s also a set of questions presented later in the book aimed at succeeding and achieving. I think they are foundational with regard to expectations and seeing your path forward. Here they are quoted.

What is our winning aspiration? Framing the choice as “winning” rules out mediocrity as an option. If you want to win, you need to know what game you’re playing and with (and against) whom. What impact do you want to have in and on the world?

Where will we play? “Boiling the ocean” is rarely successful. Choosing a sector, geography, product, channel and customer allows you to focus your resources.

How will we win? What’s the defendable difference that will open up the gap between you and the others?

What capabilities must be in place? Not just what do you need to do, but how will it become and stay a strength?

What management systems are required? It’s easy enough to measure stuff. It’s much harder to figure out what you want to measure that actually matters.

I won’t say this is a must read book. All in all, though, I think it’s worth a look if you’ve got a bit of time. It’s pretty quick to get through.

This is not a coaching book, per se. You are unlikely to learn from it how to do X, Y, or Z.

Rather, it’s a variety of stories, observations, and commentary. Some of it is recent in origin, while other stuff seems to have been written years ago originally. The subject matter is all over the place.

For example, there is an essay by one of Terry’s daughters that is a kind of “letter to my freshman self”. In it she offers advice on how to get through that first college season, and the seasons to follow.

There’s a chapter called A Letter to the Parents of a Prospective recruit that is a coach’s appeal. If you coach college volleyball you will seriously think about using it in your own recruiting efforts!

A theme of a couple of different chapters is the idea of being uncomfortable. Terry advises recruiting players who have willingly made themselves uncomfortable. He talks about how players need to be put in uncomfortable situations to develop. He also admonishes coaches to put themselves in uncomfortable situations. We cannot, he says, demand less of ourselves than we do of our athletes.

There is a chapter outlining the factors which predict future head coaching success. Prior head coaching experience is top of the list. Not surprisingly, passion and integrity also rate quite highly.

Terry focuses directly on juniors coaches in one section. It’s perhaps the one part of the book where he gets pretty explicit about what he thinks they need to focus on. People probably won’t agree with everything he says, but at least is provides plenty of food for thought.

Another repeated theme in the book is recruiting, requiring, and relating. Terry introduces them as the Three Rs of Coaching in one chapter. They then pop up again from time to time in other chapters.

Those are some of the highlights. There are nearly 40 chapters, but the book is only about 180 pages, so each is quite short. The only lengthy one is the last (nearly 20 pages), which relates the history of Nebraska Coliseum, where Nebraska Volleyball played for so many years – including all of Terry’s time coaching there.

Overall, I think A Fresh Season is a good book. It’s length and structure make for a pretty quick read. At times it’s funny. In many places it’s thought-provoking.

A Program with Purpose, by Johan Dulfur is a volleyball turn around story, sort of. The Clarkson University volleyball team is an NCAA Division III program in upstate New York. The author is, at this writing, head coach at Ithaca College (also Div. III), but when he wrote the book he was in the middle of his 10 years at the helm of Clarkson. The text, published in 2013, speaks to how he took that program from nothing to become a team that eventually made seven straight trips to the NCAA tournament and reached the Elite 8 four straight times.

This sort of thing appeals to me. After all, it’s the intention to do just this sort of thing that saw me join Midwestern State.

At only a bit over 130 pages, A Program with a Purpose is a quick read. It’s made even quicker by a number of large visuals. You can read it in a couple of hours. It’s definitely worth that small time investment.

I mentioned at the outset that this book is a turnaround story, sort of. I say that because it’s not a narrative text. The author doesn’t start at the beginning and walk you through a sequence of events. Think of it more as a manual for program development with some historical examples interspersed.

There are seven primary chapters to the book.

Program Vision

Communication

Confidence Building and Goal Setting

Building a Support Structure

Tactical Choices within the Game

Recruiting and Team Composition

Their titles pretty much tell you what they’re about. Each shares the author’s thoughts, experience, and views on that subject, and it’s good material. You may or may not agree with everything he says, but at least it will get you thinking about things. Even if you have experience running your own program, it’s worth going through this book. It can be a good reminder of things to focus on, and we all need that from time to time. The book could have used some editing in places, but not so much that it was overly distracting.

It is noteworthy that the author spent some time working under legendary coach Mike Hebert, who wrote Thinking Volleyball. You can see a bit of his influence in Dulfur’s philosophy, though you also get a big dose of his Dutch heritage as well.

I’ve previously reviewed Sally Kus’ book Coaching Volleyball Successfully. Sally also gained her reputation coaching in Upstate New York, which is interesting. Her book focuses more on high school volleyball, while this one is obviously from a college perspective. Still, they share much in common.

Quick note. This book is not available in Kindle format. You can only get it in print.

We can’t only read books about volleyball and volleyball coaches. Heck, there just aren’t that many books about volleyball coaches! Sad, but true. That’s one of the reasons I developed Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

Anyway, an interesting book about managers from the world of soccer (football) is Living on the Volcano, by Michael Calvin. Basically, it’s a series of profiles on coaching in the English professional realm. They run the gamut from the Premier League all the way down, but are mainly in the middling ranks. Many of the coaches have worked across multiple levels, either because of the performance of their teams or through moving clubs. It’s a really interesting set of perspectives. These managers come at things from all different angles. Their backgrounds are diverse. As a result, the way they think about the elements of coaching vary considerably.

I actually shared something I found interesting from one of the managers on the Volleyball Coaching Wizards blog. It had to do with the mentality of allowing others to watch you coach. Unfortunately, I would not call that the most positive of the things you read in the book. It presents the reality of their thought process, though. For better or for worse, it’s not the most positive.

I will admit, the structure of the book did present some challenges. There are a lot of names, and they overlap quite a bit. Moreover, there were different threads of managers mentioned in the same chapter. That made it hard to follow threads at times.

Those issues aside, I think Living on the Volcano is an interesting book and worth a read. The variety of coaches is such that you’re likely to find someone in the mix who has a similar point of view as yourself. At the same time, though, you also get to see how others think about things.

Beyond that, the internal view of what it’s like to be a coach under constant performance pressure (in most cases) is really insightful. The volcano idea is definitely appropriate as even successful managers seem to constantly be on the hot seat because of everything that can happen with a club.

OK, Fake Fundamentals by Brian McCormick is a basketball focused book, and has nothing to do with volleyball. Even still, it might be worth putting it on your coaching reading list. Granted, you will probably get more out of the book if you know something about coaching basketball. I don’t, though, and still found some interesting stuff.

Basically, this is a book that challenges long-held views on what to do and how to do things. Think of anything that falls into the category of “that’s how everyone does it” and I think you’ll get the idea.

Actually, the first two chapters are not really sport-specific.

The mile run fitness test

The first chapter sets the tone for the whole book by challenging the use of mile runs as fitness tests. This is definitely something we see in volleyball, and no doubt other sports use it as well. McCormick basically destroys its usefulness on every level.

First, he demonstrates that the fitness required to run the mile has no relation to the fitness required to play basketball – or volleyball in our case. A mile is a sustained lower intensity effort for several minutes while what we’re after is repeated high intensity effort with rest intervals. McCormick uses the term Repeat Sprint Ability (RSA) as what they are after in basketball. Maybe we change that to RJA for volleyball – Repeat Jump Ability.

Next, he talks about the idea of training for the test rather than training for competitive fitness. This happens when the athlete is more concerned with passing the test than improving their sport-specific conditioning. The result is that training the latter is sub-optimal. In other words, training for the mile test acts as an offset to the RSA training the athlete is doing to prepare for their sport.

Now, many coaches who use the mile run claim that it is more about mental toughness than necessarily about fitness. McCormick challenges this as well. Mainly he does so by bringing up the increased risk of injury. This comes from two angles. One is that the athlete is performing an exercise they have not trained for (presumably – see the last paragraph). The other is that an athlete may attempt to push through an issue to demonstrate mental toughness.

Above and beyond the injury risks, the author makes the following observation:

Mental toughness involves coping with the many demands of sports and being more consistent and better at remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.

He goes on to ask whether a pre-season fitness test is really the best way to determine and/or develop an individual’s level of mental fortitude. Basically, he’s suggesting it should be done in the context of playing the sport.

McCormick offers two alternatives to the mile as fitness tests. One is the Yo-Yo intermittent recovery test. Basically, it’s a repetitive sprint test. The other he describes as the “Man-Maker from Pavel Tsatsouline’s Enter the Kettlebell”. This is where a kettlebell is swung 2-handed repeatedly for some period of time, counting the successful reps. I’m not saying these tests should be used for volleyball. They do, however, provide an idea of what the author is trying to encourage.

Static Stretching

The second chapter brings up another relic – the idea of static stretching in warm-ups. You may already know where I stand on this subject. Fortunately, I think many coaches these days realize that static stretching is no longer advised for warm-ups. There is no evidence to suggest it does anything to reduce injury, and actually may impair performance. As the author notes, “Static stretching is a flexibility program, not a warm-up.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, McCormick favors a dynamic warm-up instead. He didn’t always, though. He says he used to think non-ball warm-ups wasted time. Then he spent time in Europe and noted a lack of ACL injuries among female athletes there. This was in contrast to what he called an epidemic of non-contact injuries in the US at the time. That motivated him to bring in the dynamic warm-up. He provides a list of exercises in an appendix. I do not know if the science backs up the idea that either dynamic warm-ups or ball warm-ups are better for injury prevention (or performance), though.

The rest of the book

The remaining eight chapters focus on basketball specific things. They include certain movements, methods, and game-play elements. The author challenges them all from a couple of different perspectives. One is what theory might suggest vs. what reality demonstrates. The other is in terms of not replicating game conditions (game teaches the game). In most cases he’s going against decades of traditional coaching.

I think that last part is the real value of the book. It encourages the reader to look at everything critically. How much of our coaching is just repeating the past? Is there really any scientific or performance support for it?

It took me several months, but I eventually finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallway. The women’s soccer coach at Midwestern State loaned it to me. He uses it quite a bit with his team. The reason I took so long was that I read it in small doses rather than sitting down for long reads. I probably should have just read it in one go. After all, it’s a short book (134 pages).

The fact that I had not read the book already was a source of shock and sadness to one of my coaching friends. I suggest you not make the same mistake. It was recommended during my CAP III course.

I personally think the measure of any good non-fiction book is how much it makes you think. By that standard, Inner Game is a great offering. Yes, it’s a book focused on tennis. And yes, that does mean at times the discussion is not overly useful for volleyball coaches. Broadly speaking, though, the concepts and ideas translate easily from sport to sport.

Inner Game was written primarily for players, but is easily translatable to coaching. It talks a lot about player thought processes. In particular, a big focus is on getting the conscious mind out of the way. Doing so allows the parts of us where performance and learning actually take place to do their thing. A big part of this is removing judgement from the equation.

We all have players who think too much about their technique. It is usually to the detriment of their performance. The problem is we coaches exacerbate things at times. This is the result of how we provide feedback and technical instruction. I definitely thought of the concepts of internal vs. external feedback while reading the book.

There are some good sections on focus and concentration in the book. I also really like the discussion of competition. If you struggle to express its merits to your athletes, I definitely recommend that section.

Here’s the bottom line. If you haven’t already, read The Inner Game of Tennis. It will stimulate all kinds of thoughts about your coaching methods. That’s a good thing!

Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson is a book I’ve been aware of for years. I’ve heard it recommended by coaches a number of times. My Volleyball Coaching Wizards partner, Mark Lebedew, mentioned it during his interview. He mocked me when I admitted I was only just reading the book for the first time at that point.

Obviously, you have to take seriously any book written by a coach with as much success as Jackson had in his career. Honestly, though, at least part of my reason for not reading the book sooner is that it’s focus is basketball. I’m not a huge fan of the sport. And of course being a volleyball coach I have often been in conflict with basketball. We always seem to be at odds when it comes to court time, players, resources, etc. That may have been another underlying reason for not picking up Sacred Hoops. That said, I have read stuff by/about John Wooden, but I feel like his coaching stature goes far beyond basketball at this point.

There are basically four elements to Sacred Hoops. One is Jackson’s personal road to philosophical development. I’ve read quite a bit on Zen and other philosophies, so I found his perspective in that regard interesting. Another is a discussion of how Phil developed as a coach. I think those sorts of things are worthwhile generally speaking. They can be sources of inspiration and motivation.

The third is a history of the Bulls teams up to the point of the book’s writing. That bit I could care less about, as you can imagine. Interwoven in that history, though, is the fourth element, which is how Jackson – at least in his own mind – dealt with a variety of different coaching challenges along the way. The level of athlete may be considerably different from the ones we have to work with, but many of the issues Phil brings up have parallels at all levels and in all sports.

I’m not going to say Sacred Hoops was some kind of major “Wow!” read for me. There weren’t any parts which forced me to rethink things in my own coaching in a serious fashion. Perhaps that’s at least partly because I’d already read about some of the philosophical stuff seemingly at the core of Jackson’s way of thinking, so there weren’t a lot of new ideas in that vein. Still, I thought it was a useful read from the perspective of offering up a different set of ways to look at things that could be filed away for potential future use or reference. For that reason I do recommend it for volleyball coaches. Content aside, it’s a convenient read as it comprises a lot of short sections so you can read it in short bursts as I did.

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